After these events Hunyady continued to act as governor or regent of Hungary for five years more, by which time the young Ladislaus, son of King Albert, attained his majority.  In 1453 Hunyady finally laid down his dignity as governor, and gave over the power into the hands of the young King, Ladislaus V, whom Hunyady had first to liberate by force of arms from his uncle, Frederick of Austria, before he could set him on the throne of Hungary.  The young King, of German origin, had hardly become emancipated from his guardian when he fell under the influence of his other uncle, Ulric Czillei.  This Czillei was a great nobleman of Styria, but was withal possessed of large estates in Hungary.  As a foreigner and as a relative of King Sigismund, he had long viewed with an evil eye Hunyady’s elevation.  On one occasion Hunyady had to inflict punishment on him.  He consequently now did everything he could to induce the young King, his nephew, to hate the great captain as he himself did.  He sought to infuse jealousy into his mind and to lead him to believe that Hunyady aimed at the crown.  His slanders found the readier credence in the mind of the youthful sovereign as he was completely stupefied by an uninterrupted course of debauchery.  At last the King was brought to agree to a plan for ensnaring the great man who so often jeoparded his life and his substance in the defence of his country and religion.  They summoned him in the King’s name to Vienna, where Ladislaus, as an Austrian prince, was then staying, with the intention of waylaying and murdering him.  But Hunyady got wind of the whole plot, and when he arrived at the place of ambush it was at the head of two thousand picked Hungarian warriors.  Thus it was Czillei who fell into the snare.  “Wretched creature!” exclaimed Hunyady; “thou hast fallen into the pit thou diggedst for me; were it not that I regard the dignity of the King and my own humanity, thou shouldst suffer a punishment proportioned to thy crime.  As it is, I let thee off this time, but come no more into my sight, or thou shalt pay for it with thy life.”

Such magnanimity, however, did not disarm the hostility of those who surrounded the King.  On the pretence of treason against the King, Hunyady was deprived of all his offices and all his estates.  The document is still to be seen in the Hungarian state archives, in which the King, led astray by the jealousies that prevailed among his councillors, represents every virtue of the hero as a crime, and condemns him to exile.

Fortunately Czillei himself soon fell into disfavor; the Germans themselves overthrew him; and the King, now better informed, replaced Hunyady in the post of captain-general of the kingdom.

Hunyady, who meanwhile had been living retired in one of his castles, now complied with the King’s wish without difficulty or hesitation, and again assumed the highest military command.  Instead of seeking how to revenge himself after the manner of ordinary men, he only thought of the great enemy of his country, the Turk.  And indeed, as it was, threatening clouds hung over the horizon in the southeast.